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HTML5 based mobile game with multiplayer choices


Vivek Agrawal
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Hello Guys,

I am developing a html5 based mobile game, multiplayer. It will be a simple card game with lobby etc.

I was wondering if Phaser is the right choice to develop the game or something else will be better for this purpose.

As for multiplayer part i need to know which is a good service I can use out there. I need a service. I have heard that firebase is good, but i am not sure if it will be the best choice for this kind of game. 

Any suggestions for both front end and the server part are welcome.

Thanks

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Phaser can handle most 2d games, it is well maintained, has a good api and is easy to use with loads of examples and good docs. I'd say it would be a great choice for you and would let you get writing the actual game code pretty much straight away.

I can't vouch for Firebase, I havent used it and I've heard very mixed reviews, some love it, some hate it.

I can vouch for Socket.io, again, simple, clean and concise api, well maintained with plenty of info out there. It'll involve you likely doing more coding than something like firebase as its a library and not a framework.

Have you looked at Meteor? I havent used it either, have heard mixed reviews (although mainly positive) but it seems to be growing a nice user base. It's mainly aimed at real-time web-apps but your problems are the same. Still not convinced its exactly what youre after.

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EC2 is just compute power, you can run what you like on there.

Many companies will offer you compute power cheaper than Amazon (this is not ragging on Amazon, their suite of tools/services is comprehensive, its just you dont always need to pay top-dollar for some things), DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, you can provision a box simply and fairly cheaply with all. I use DO regularly for smaller/medium-sized projects and have had no problems.

Parse sounds ok, I have no experience with it as I write all that stuff myself (or my team does).

It sounds like really you just need state stored on the server and messages passed to connected clients, and you'd need a way to group clients into a game-group. This all sounds fairly straight-forward (simple is good) so maybe something like Parse would suit you well. You'll need to be careful with limiting your requests though as it looks like it could get expensive quick, although if all you are doing is sending requests when someone 'plays' a card, 30 per second is going to give you quite a few concurrent players before you start paying.

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EC2 relates to the server instance, I dont know much about Firebase (and a 5 minute wonder-stop at their site didnt really help me either, as a side note, why dont these companies actually say what they do?) but if it just sets up a restful api for a database then it will be running on something, maybe even an EC2 instance.

 

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Firebase, Parse, and a number of similar communication services provide a turnkey means of allowing multiple instances of your app to communicate with each other (e.g., such as in a multi-player game). These services take care of all of the server-side stuff for you, so you only need to write the client-side code. Note that some of these services, such as Photon, specialize in multi-player game communication. A specialized service like Photon will save you even more work by providing features like matchmaking, leaderboards, etc, which are not provided by the more generic communication services such as Firebase and Parse.

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4 hours ago, BobF said:

Firebase, Parse, and a number of similar communication services provide a turnkey means of allowing multiple instances of your app to communicate with each other (e.g., such as in a multi-player game). These services take care of all of the server-side stuff for you, so you only need to write the client-side code. Note that some of these services, such as Photon, specialize in multi-player game communication. A specialized service like Photon will save you even more work by providing features like matchmaking, leaderboards, etc, which are not provided by the more generic communication services such as Firebase and Parse.

ah thats really useful information, so besides Photon do you know any others? I found out there is SmartFoxServer, anything else?

and any that you have used and found to be good? any pros and cons or suggestions you might have, I would love to hear.

Thanks

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There are lots of generic communication services. Some of the better known ones are Firebase, Parse, Pusher, and PubNub, but there are plenty of others. There are not so many of these services that specialize in multi-player games. I know I have seen a couple other than Photon, but I don't recall the names. I believe I may have also seen a fledgling multi-player service or two announced here (check the "News" forum).

Photon is the service I've been watching because it appears well established, has good features, and seems reasonably priced. Note that I have not tried any of these services yet since I will not implement multi-player until later this year. Most likely I will use Photon to save time and effort, but I'm also tempted to set up Socket.io on my own server and go that route.

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Quote

Yeah, I was surprised when I heard about this, especially since Parse was backed by Facebook. Fortunately, there are lots of alternatives.

Parse's demise serves as a good reminder that when using a third-party service in your app you should access the service through your own facade object so you can easily change to a different service later.

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I cant say I'm totally surprised, most of these things arent designed to last long (its a good business model for the business, terrible for any actual users), FB bought the people, they have no need of the service. But thats kinda the problem, I cant see any scope for an 'automated' backend, the only people who need such a service cant afford to build it, ergo, they cant afford to keep your business in the black either.

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